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Star Citizen developer announced that it’s switching from CryTek’s CryEngine to Amazon’s Lumberyard for its open-galaxy space sim.
To ensure they deliver the best experience out there, the team at Roberts Space Industries is always looking for ways to improve Star Citizen for players. According to a new announcement from the company, Star Citizen is moving from Crytek’s CryEngine to Amazon’s Lumberyard gaming engine to achieve that.
In a press release, head of studio, Chris Roberts, offered some thoughts on why the team chose to make the change. Roberts said:
“We’ve been working with Amazon for more than a year, as we have been looking for a technology leader to partner with for the long term future of Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Lumberyard provides groundbreaking technology features for online games. Because we share a common technical vision, it has been a very smooth and easy transition to Lumberyard.“
Although this is probably good news for the future of Star Citizen, it’ll undoubtedly ruffle a few feathers among backers of the title. The game has already been postponed well past its original launch timeline, and the change from CryEngine to Lumberyard will just add more wait time to an already long delay.
Granted, this might be a move more out of necessity than pure choice. Not long ago, Crytek announced it is shutting down five of its studios and reorganizing its efforts to concentrate on its core technologies. Considering the shakeup that happened within Crytek, the team at Roberts Space Industries probably thought it best to forgo potential issues with CryEngine and use a game engine build by a more solid company, like Amazon.
The announcement said the newest update for Star Citizen, known as 2.6 Alpha, will run on Lumberyard. Of course, there will be a few things that need to be worked out in order for the development team to improve the abilities and limitations of Lumberyard, so players should expect some more updates and fixes to arrive in the near future.
Star Citizen is currently available in a development state on PC.
